Roberta Flack dies aged 88
Grammy-award winning singer Roberta Flack has died at the age of 88, her publicist has announced.
The American singer was best known for her hit songs Killing Me Softly With His Song and The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.
Flack pictured in 1972. Pic: Photoreporters/Shutterstock
One of the top recording artists of the 1970s, she died on Monday surrounded by her family, her publicist Elaine Schock said in a statement.
In 2022, Flack announced she was suffering from motor neurone disease (MND), and could no longer sing.
Rising to fame in her early 30s, Flack became an overnight success after Clint Eastwood chose her song, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, as the soundtrack for the explicit love scenes of his 1971 movie Play Misty For Me.
The track topped the US charts in 1972, and Flack was rewarded with a Grammy.
The following year she took the coveted Record of the Year prize at the Grammys for a second time with Killing Me Softly, becoming the first artist ever to do so.
Discovered in the late 1960s by jazz musician Les McCann, Flack was a classically trained pianist, receiving a full scholarship to study at Howard University at just 15.
McCann later wrote of Flack: “Her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known.”
Flack with her Grammy for Killing Me Softly in 1974. Pic: AP
A shining light in the social and civil rights movement of the time, Flack was friends with both Reverend Jesse Jackson and Angela Davis whom Flack visited in prison when Davis faced charges – for which she was acquitted – for murder and kidnapping.
Flack also sang at the funeral of Jackie Robinson, Major League Baseball’s first black player.
Living on the same floor of the famous Dakota apartment building as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Flack also became friends with the Beatle, later releasing an album of Beatles covers.
Flack in 1976. Pic: Robert Legon/Shutterstock
Born Roberta Cleopatra Flack, to musician parents in Black Mountain, North Carolina, in 1937, she was raised in Arlington, Virginia.
She was married to jazz musician Stephen Novosel between 1966 and 1972.
Flack’s other hits from the 1970s included Feel Like Makin’ Love and two duets with her close friend and former Howard University classmate Donny Hathaway, Where Is the Love and The Closer I Get to You.
Sadly, their partnership ended in tragedy, after he fell to his death from his hotel room in Manhattan in 1979, after suffering a breakdown while they were recording an album of duets together.
Stevie Wonder and Flack perform a duet in 1985. Pic: AP
While Flack never matched her first run of success, she had a follow-up hit in the 1980s with the Peabo Bryson duet Tonight, I Celebrate My Love and in the 1990s with the Maxi Priest duet Set The Night To Music.
In the mid-90s, she received a wave of new attention after the Fugees covered Killing Me Softly. She would go on to perform with the hip-hop band on stage.
A five-time Grammy winner, Flack received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2020.
Contemporary stars to praise her include Beyoncé, John Legend and Ariana Grande.
Flack in 2010. Pic: Reuters/John Sommers
Working as a high-school teacher in her 20s, while gigging in clubs during the evenings, Flack proved a canny educator, telling the Tampa Bay Times in 2012: “I was teaching at Banneker Junior High in Washington, DC It was part of the city where kids weren’t that privileged, but they were privileged enough to have music education.
“I really wanted them to read music. First, I’d get their attention. [I’d sing]: ‘Stop, in the name of love.’ Then I could teach them!”
Eddie Murphy has told Sky News he doesn’t ever expect to win awards – but will happily accept an honorary Oscar when he’s 90.
Murphy is one of the biggest stars in comedy after starting out on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 1980 and starring in a number of big franchises from Beverly Hills Cop to Shrek.
His latest project is heist comedy The Pickup, centred on two security van drivers. Keke Palmer and Pete Davidson star alongside him.
Pete Davidson, Eddie Murphy and Keke Palmer in The Pickup. Pic: Amazon MGM Studios
Murphy says award recognition was never something that shaped the projects he chose.
“The movies are timeless, and they’re special, so for years and years those movies play and the movies have commercial success.
“So you make a lot of money and people love it, so you don’t even think about ‘I didn’t win a trophy!’ The response from the people and that the movie has legs, that’s the trophy.
“You know what I’ve earned over these years? One day, they’ll give me one of those honorary Oscars. When I’m really old. And I’ll say thank you so much for this wonderful honour. I’ll be old like that and I’ll have no teeth. I’m cool with getting my honorary Oscar when I’m 90.”
Murphy, 64, has only been nominated once – for Dreamgirls in 2007, when Alan Arkin won the best supporting actor Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine.
Murphy’s co-star Palmer says she considers Murphy an icon in the industry, and The Nutty Professor was a true display of his artistry.
Eddie Murphy as Sherman Klump in The Nutty Professor. Pic: Reuters
“I feel like recognition and [being] underrated and all this stuff, it annoys me a little bit because I think impact is really the greatest thing, like how people were moved by your work, which can’t really be measured by an award or really anything,” Palmer says.
“It’s very hard to make people laugh, and so when I think about it like The Nutty Professor, Eddie was doing everything, and I swear that the family members were real people.
“He didn’t camp it to the point where they weren’t realistic. His roles had integrity, even when he was in full costume. And I do think that’s something that should change in our industry. Comedy, it should be looked at just as prestigious as when you see somebody cry, because it’s that hard to make somebody laugh.”
Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson in The Pickup. Pic: Amazon MGM Studios
Recalling his time on the 90s comedy, Murphy says he’s still in disbelief of what they achieved in making the film with him playing seven characters – Professor Sherman Klump, Buddy Love, Lance Perkins, Young Papa Klump, Granny Klump, Ernie Klump and Mama Klump.
“You can only shoot one character a day. And the rest of the time you’re shooting, I’m talking to tennis balls where the people were sitting.
“So to this day when I watch it, I’m like, wow, that’s a trip. But we were able to mix all that stuff up and different voices and make it feel so that you don’t even feel like when you’re watching it, someone have to tell you, hey, you know, those are all one person.”
The film won best makeup at the 1997 Academy Awards.
Security guards buddy comedy
Palmer says their new project, The Pickup, is responsible for one of the most memorable moments of her life when she mistook Murphy’s acting for real praise.
“First of all, Eddie gives me this big speech before I do the monologue, where he’s like, ‘this is not playing around. This is a pivotal point in the movie’.
“I’m crying in the scene, and then it comes to the end, and Eddie’s [clapping] like, and I’m literally like, ‘oh my gosh, thank you so much’. And he’s like, ‘I’m acting’. When I tell you, it was so crazy, yeah. That’s like one of my most memorable moments in life.”
Keke Palmer and Pete Davidson star in The Pickup
Davidson is excited to see how the UK puts its own stamp on SNL, the show where both he and Murphy got their start on-screen.
“It’s a smart idea to have SNL over there because it’s not that it’s a different brand of comedy, but it is a little bit. A lot of the biggest stuff that’s in the States is stuff that we stole from you guys, like The Office or literally anything Ricky Gervais does.
“This is the first time I’ve ever heard anything American going to the UK, so I think it’s great. I think it’s great to have two opposite sorts of takes on things, but both be funny. That just shows you how broad comedy can be, you know?
The Pickup is out on Prime Video now.
Dean Cain has been branded the “worst superman ever” as he announced he will join the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “ASAP”.
The 59-year-old, who was cast as Superman in the TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, announced he had joined the team amid the federal agency’s unprecedented immigration raids.
He told Fox News on Wednesday his recruitment video on Instagram had gone viral and since then, “I have spoken with some of the officials over at ICE and I will be sworn in as an ICE agent ASAP”.
“You can defend your homeland and get great benefits,” he said in the Instagram post where he appealed for his followers to join ICE.
Speaking with the Superman theme song in the background, he said “hundreds of thousands of criminals” had been arrested since US President Donald Trump took office.
He then told his followers they would get a series of benefits if they joined ICE, including a $50,000 (£37,407) signing bonus and student loan repayment.
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“If you want to help save America ICE is arresting the worst of the worst and removing them from America’s streets,” he said, before adding: “I voted for that.”
ICE agents are under pressure from the White House to boost their deportation numbers in line with Mr Trump’s campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration.
Cain’s post on Instagram received some backlash, with one user commenting: “Worst superman ever”.
Another said: “Shame on you Dean – that’s the most un-Superman thing you could possibly advocate.”
One fan turned against him and said: “Until I saw this I was such a fan. What a sad human being you must be.”
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